Iraqi Prison Abuse
 

chain of command. The shit hits the top of the chain.

Plus, they just don't like him.

-sm

1) He knew about torture and sexual abuse almost 5 months ago - if not longer - and did nothing. Did not even bother to look at the pictures on those many CDs until the night before called back to testify before Congress.
2) He testified in closed session to Congress only hours before CBS would release the story. He knew the story was going to be released, was in a perfect scenario to notify Congress, and he said nothing. He left even Congress blindsided by a story and facts that were known for months.
3) from The Economist: Those are only the immediately obvious reasons for Rumsfeld to resign. There is no one killer reason. Just a very long list of mistakes, outright deceptions, and lies going back to the original reasons for a Pearl Harbor attack on Iraq. So many in Congress now feel deceived. Some examples:
1) Rumsfeld said only 30,000 troops would be needed after major hostilities ended even though Chairman of the Joint Cheifs was saying 200,000+ for at least two years. The Chairman basically lost his job for telling a truth that Rumsfeld did not want told. Currently Rumsfeld is only talking force protection rather than a solution to Iraq because of a shortage of troops in country. Force protection is a buzz word meaning we will be there far longer than originally anticipated (duhhhhh).
2) Rumsfeld keeps saying if they need more troops, then they should just say so. But commanders have been repeatedly saying they have been deprived of sufficient resources through the only channel available - retired Generals. Most materials that are missing is because Rumsfeld's DoD had no idea that we would be an occupation army of people who did not want to be liberated. They actually thought we would win the war and just go home.
3) When they got to Baghdad, troops had no orders, no instructions, and no next objective. Same as the mistake made after liberation of Kuwait. 3rd Infantry after action reports make this obvious. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al had no idea what to do and assumed Iraq would solve itself. A wound left open and untreated has now festered.
4) He completely denied there was any looting when literally the entire country was being looted.
5) Rumsfeld and DoD are suppose to be running the reconstructiion of Iraq. It is moving at an almost zero pace. Example: Whereas Saddam could restore the electricity in a month, the DoD under Rumsfeld could not get the system fully working after 6 months. Even then, Saddam's Iraq had still produced more electricity.
6) Far more money is disappearing into Iraq then Rumsfeld will admit. Example: When short troops, then the Pentagon has hired over 20,000 contractor troops at more than $100,000 per man per year to do in Iraq what regular troops are suppose to perform. Massive money is being spent and still Congress remains uninformed how large the bill really is.
7) The entire Iraq torture and abuse occurred when top commanders (probably including Rumsfeld) decided to run Iraqi prisons more like Guantanamo prisons. That is when the torture and abuse began and was condoned, obviously, at very high levels of command.
8) It could be as high as 80% of he prisoners in Guantanamo are innocent. Rumors of this suggest why the intelligence gathering system was expanded to Iraq - because insufficient information was being obtained from Guantanamo. Some theory that Iraqi prisons also must be full of Al Qaeda information - if only we break them down.
9) from CNN and notice how many months ago this was reported:10) Many in Congress don't like enlisted men being made scape goats for only doing what Rumsfeld and others ordered. Did Rumsfeld specifically called for torture and sexual abuse. No. But that is what should and would happen without rule of law and when Guantanamo standard procedures were implemented in Iraq.
11) Warned repeatedly that this was happening, instead Rumsfeld could not even be bothered to read reports or view the pictures. He so little respected Geneva Convention standards as to all but say this sort of thing should be expected. Just more attitude that has so dismayed even his supporters.

Few of so many little things that are directly traceable to Rumsfeld. Even two of his strongest supporters - The Ecomomist and the Army Times - have bluntly called for his resignation. Its no longer retired generals that note the bad situation we are in. Now active generals such as commander of the 82nd Airborne are now publically questioning leadership decisions. Rumsfeld's leadership has become that questionable that even active generals are publically asking questions.

We are now in a quagmire with no exit strategy and no apparent solution. And yet Rumsfeld talks as it everything is going according to plan. What plan? That too has finally dawned on Congress. We have no plan other than the force democracy upon people who neither wanted it nor (in most cases) know what democracy is.

There are certain principles fundamental to America. That includes not going to war without a smoking gun, no outright lying to Congress as only an Oliver North might, no torture as is standard practice in Guantanamo Bay, no lies to Congress and the public to justify war, and telling Congress in advance what the real costs will be. Rumsfeld has, to one degree or another, violated every listed principle.

Are those enough reasons or do you want more?

"The buck stops here"

The accusations are just too numerous to even list here. Numbers are in the tens of thousands held with legal process and often moved about so that the International Red Cross cannot find them. This is part of the system setup either by or for and known to Rumsfeld:

I found an interesting bit here:

http://www.reason.com/cy/cy051104.shtml

Cruelty is a human trait that cuts across national lines. As the scandal has shown, it cuts across gender lines as well: At least two female soldiers have been implicated in the mistreatment and sexual humiliation of prisoners, one of them appearing in some of the infamous photos. The prison commander was also a woman, Brigadier General Janice Karpinski.

Ludicrously, a few conservatives—the smirking provocateur Ann Coulter and the usually sensible Linda Chavez—have used this as an argument against women in the military. A more common response, from left and right, has been hand-wringing over the fact that women could do such things—either because women themselves have been victims of sexual violence or because women should be inherently better than that. But there is little basis for such expectations. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had their share of female torturers.

When given power over others, some human beings (including women) will abuse that power in sickening ways. This is a fact of life. The responsibility of the US military was to prevent such abuses or at least nip them in the bud. This responsibility has not been met—a failure that we are only now, perhaps too late for the war effort, beginning to correct.

The famous Stanford prison experiment ?

I'd say a certain degree of unkind handling is inevitable... it's necessary to (subconsciously) convince soldiers that the people they're killing are not really people, quite apart from the fact that they see their fellow-soldiers killed by such folk, and then they have to take custody of them... you just have to limit it so it doesn't spill over into cruelty.

I might throw in at this juncture that a fair few of us in the UK think someone at a high level in our government , should be doing the decent thing and falling on their goddamn sword for this outrage. British troops have killed and tortured.

My personal perception of Rummy since the whole Iraq thing started up was that he was confrontational and arrogant.

I wonder how much /of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is backlash for the allied civilians who were beaten, hanged from the bridge, and burned to death? What about the civilian who was beheaded?

Not saying it's right, mind you, but it seems that all this "iraqi prisoner abuse" came out after the burning of the civilians.

Payback can be a bitch.


And you know, it seems to me that people have forgotten the outrage they felt on 9/11. Back then, we were ready to kick some ass. Everyone was behind Bush. Now, people are more worried about the enemy than they are about the allies. We got Sadaam--which is a good thing, because whomever thinks that he wouldn't have jumped right on the Al-Q bandwagon, if he wasn't on it already, is living in a dream world.

Just because we haven't gotten the big guy yet doesn't mean this was a failure. All of a sudden, people are talking about how Bush did this, and how he did that....they forget that they were right behind him when this shit happened. I'm not a humongous Bush fan, but I think he did the best that could be done at the time, and I still support his decision to go to war. It was what had to be done. Had we not retaliated, it would've been open season on the wussy USA, and everyone knows it.

And speaking of screw-ups, didn't Clinton know about all these threats ahead of time? If anyone should've been forced to resign, it was HIM. I don't think that we've ever had a worse president, IMO. He was like the idiot brother you hid in the closet when company came over, so he wouldn't embarrass you. Interesting, too, I think, that Sadaam thought Clinton was just the shit....

I think we should be more concerned with our (AMERICA'S---remember America? The wronged country?) safety than about bitching after the fact. It's easy to play monday-night quarterback when you're not in the hot seat. Bush did what he felt was right, and everyone backed him then---but now they blame him for everything from the prisoner abuse to the sand flies.

I agree that those who abused the prisoners should pay for it. While I may understand their feelings, I don't agree with their actions. But I also think it's time to start worrying more about the safety of our country, and relaying the fact that we're not going to take this terrorist shit, than we are about giving comfort to the enemy, who'd probably treat allied prisoners the same way, considering how much they hate Americans.

We're rebuilding their frigging country for them, like we always do after we kick someone's ass. If they were smart, they'd let us do it and wait for us to leave, instead of torturing and killing civilians, which is going to result in backlash, no matter what. That's just human nature.


Sidhe


edited to add the rant...sorry, couldn't help it. It pisses me off when people forget what happened that day, and are more concerned with downing the US and whining about the treatment the enemy soldiers are getting....:mad:

All of this is because some people are willing to say that people who are different are not actually people.

Payback never stops being a bitch. Or, rather, the two sides involved become payback's bitch.

These pics happened before this incident IIRC.

In some ways I admire Rummy, being that teflon coated isn't easy, particularly when you're that arrogant and that single minded. I always enjoy watching the live press conferences with him, he's one of the slickest guys I've seen when it comes to not only fending off questions but taking them, twisting them baloon-animal style and shoving them down the throat of the poor reporter. That takes skill.

On the flipside he fucked up in Iraq, badly.

I find the way they're trying to control troops with cameras and internet access now interesting if expected, embedding reporters was a masterstroke in media control but they didn't see this one coming.

The pictures came out after the bridge incident, but they were taken before the bridge incident.

America wasn't wronged by Iraq.

So many people still think we invaded Iraq because of connections to Sept 11. No, thats the other war in Afghanistan. Remember the Taliban?, thats not Iraq. Osama is still running around.

We *now* say we attacked and invaded Baghdad to transform the Middle East by building, coercing, forcing if we must, a Democracy there. And to execute this grandiose and expensive plan those hungry for it jumped on the political climate of the US. We were ripe for manipulation, using fear and anger and misinformation. That makes me mad. Freedom fucking fries.

Looks like we've done wonders for Islamic terrorist recruiting.

Another cluster of damning oversites for Rumsfeld was his lack of briefing both the House and Senate defense committees, (or doing his job), at the meetings held just for such updates, the week that he knew CBS was running the images. (To say nothing of notifying Bush who expressed his cluelessness) Interesting to me how hard Rove came down hard on Rumsfeld. Karl doesnt like a media surprise, particularly in a campaign year.

also

the group killed in Falluja were not civilians they were mercenaries

It now looks as if the terrible corpse desecration and surrounding crowd was all staged to provoke the enivitable American overreaction in the attack on Falluja. I can't find the picture, but I remember seeing a picture showing that the crowds at the desecration were much smaller then suggested by the pictures and that there was a guy holding a sign telling the crowd when to cheer. This is textbook guerrilla warfare, who is winning the media war? or hearts and minds?

Lets hope that once Kerry has the election sown up, he can switch to talking about an exit strategy. He doesn't talk about one much now because he is afraid to sound unpatrotic. I think his current strategy of more international involvement might suffer from what Colin Powel called "china shop rules" i.e. you break it you fix it, unless he delivers real sovereignty to the Iraqes and sets a withdrawl date for American troops.

I read that they were civilian security people. Private security, whether or not those providing the security are ex-military, is not the same thing as a mercernary. Mercernaries take money to fight WARS, for whichever side will pay them the most. Not the same thing.


"Blackwater Security Consulting, the North Carolina company which employed the four men, said only that they had been in Falluja to provide protection for food convoys into the town but gave no further details.

Blackwater was founded in 1996 by a former US navy commando. It recruits former special forces soldiers, FBI agents and policemen to provide military and police training, and to serve as bodyguards and bomb disposal experts. Its employees are responsible for protecting Paul Bremer, the American civilian administrator in Iraq."


Sidhe

Private security like the private security firms which have been helping the coalition interrogate Iraqi prisoners?

Oh and Since Paul Bremer is the Civil Administrator in Iraq and Iraq is a country under occupation, it stands to reason that he and any who work for and with him become legitimate targets for the resistance movement and those members of the general populace who dont want to be ruled by an occupying force. It is completely disingenuous to characterise them as mere security personnel of a similar calibre and level of guilt/culpability as the average ex-cop security guard down at the local hospital or warehouse.

We, the Coalition of the Willing have invaded another soveriegn nation after 10 years of softening them up with bombs and sanctions,starving their children with the help of the dictator we had previously assisted;Disarmed them in full view of the world then launched our nights of Shock and Awe.

Now we sit in their seats of power and we lay laws down in their lands;we ascribe innocence and guilt to those who choose to submit and those who do not;we attack insurgents with no regard for the loss of innocent lives;kick down the doors of ordinary people in the middle of the night an drag out their sons, beat them and kick them to the ground, tie their wrists or worse;touch women with no regard for how great an insult that is;frighten them with dogs and take aimed fatal shots at civilians, children,old ladies......

When they killed the security personnel they were attacking part of the machine of governance which is currently being imposed upon them. It was a legitimate act of resistance.

They were mercs they were not repairing telephone wire, they were guns for hire...

There are a lot of them in Iraq

..and to return a bit to the start of the thread the question of why Rumsfeld should go, I think it was Churchill who said this first "not just wrong but mistaken", the whole Iraq adventure wrong in my opinion from the start has also been run incompetently, many of those mistakes directly tracable to Rumsfeld. Amongst those are the use of mercenaries so that Rumsfeld can play with his army light idea and also the culture of avoidence of enemies rights that has lead to the PR disaster of Abu Ghraib. I could go on, but it would be hard to think of near anything Rumsfeld has done right since..ever?

from

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0712-05.htm

And right now some Iraqi somewhere is saying the same thing about the beheading. That attitude can not only start a race to the bottom, it can grease the track.


So the president took our outrage, our determination, and our goodwill, and used it to invade the wrong fucking country!, against the advice and wishes of most of the world and a number of his advisors. As for Saddam Hussein, a secular Sunni leader persecuting a Shiite majority, supporting a Shiite Islamist terrorist organization which would likely turn on him in an instant, yes I have some serious doubts. So far the only people who were dumb enough to voluntarily back Al-Q without realizing they had their own agenda, back when they were the muhajadeen, ]was us.


I'm not arguing Afghanistan, but this constant confusion between "War on Terror" and Iraq, by otherwise rational people, still confuses me. Again, Bush took the ball during 9/11, to his credit. He then did one right thing (Afghanistan) and then ran in the wrong direction and scored for the other team. Thanks to Iraq, there are probably more potential terrorists out there than there ever have been. Bush might as well pose for an Al-Qaeda recruiting poster.

Comparing Bush and Clinton, and coming up with Clinton as the idiot? Aside from some truly stupid personal behavior, Clinton at least had people looking in the right places. As far as respect goes, Clinton had the respect of many world leaders. Compare that to Bush, who took a large deposit of goodwill following 9/11 and completely squandered it.

Everyone was dumb enough to give him a blank check on Iraq. Congress should have demanded consultation before attacking. Bush claimed a 'clear and present' danger, invaded without considering the consequences, as usual ignored the more pessimistic assessments of manpower and resources needed, and stuck the entire country in a giant sandtrap. I cannot think of anyone who does not believe that this is "Bush's War". Noone in Congress demanded we invade Iraq. I think even those allies who had troops on the ground with us were suprised that we finally attacked instead of opting to contain and pressure Hussein.



Actually, since there is no single group of insurgents, it is hard to gauge a single response. Some captives get medical attention, some are executed. Considering you have two major groups, plus random terrorist cells, putting a single face on the enemy is impossible. Ask a US soldier in Vietnam if he would rather fall into the hands of the NVA or the Khmer Rouge. And by getting caught torturing prisoners (yes it really is torture), we are giving aid and comfort to the enemy in handing them the greatest propoganda victory of the war.

BTW, the whole "let's do this to them because they'd probably do the same to us" ranks right up there with "It's ok to steal/lie/cheat because everyone else does it" as one of the lamest moral prevarications ever used.

Human nature is to resist outside interference. We really don't care about them. They know this. We really didn't go to war to 'free Iraq'. They know this too. If we hadn't done such a half-assed job, they might have gotten with the program, but it's obvious we didn't commit enough resources at the outset to get the job done, even without civil unrest.

As for the abuse. Deep down, the government wishes the pictures never got out. They weren't that upset by the initial reports of abuse. Like many Americans, the concept really doesn't take hold until you see the pictures. It is especially troubling when you consider that there was no due process and some guys in that jail are probably innocent jerks who were picked up off the street, or because some neighbor wanted to make points with the US or was mad at them.

The US is now in the business of 'disappearing' people. This means grabbing someone and not even telling their families where they are. Imagine your son or daughter going out to run an errand and never returning. Going to authorities meets a blank wall. Then you hear that a notorious prison is back in business and that there are abuses going on. And you still cannot find out if you son/daughter/cousin/uncle is alive.

This is supposed to win hearts and minds and make everyone believe we're the good guys?

Someone on another board I frequent asked the question, "Do you feel safer now than you did 2 years ago?"

My answer: "Fuck no! I feel less safe now than I did 2 years ago."

Whether fighting wars or 'providing security' these guys are mercs, plain and simple. They are militarily trained (often SpecOps types), heavily armed dudes who are payed to shoot anyone that gets in the way, the fact it's not all out war doesn't mean they are not mercs. There are also 10,000 of them in Iraq at the moment. I've met some of these guys working in similar security positions in other locations, you can't compare them to rent-a-cops with oversize tourches, these guys are serious military types that tend to see the world as good guys and bad guys, end of story.

An army of G. Gordon Liddys.:worried:

TW stole my juice – damnit
 

You know I expect this sort of depraved behavior from Americans, hell we’re a bunch of savages but the British? Well now the world has certainly to hell in a hand basket when properly bred British troops would do something as rude as torture.

Precisely, and truth be told, I've never felt 100% "safe" anyway, especially knowing that someone could easily drag my black ass behind a truck, like in the case of James Byrd .

Oh, did I go there? I sure did. Homegrown terrorism anyone? :angry:

The vast majority of terrorism on US soil has been by US citizens.

I think that depends on your definition of "terrorism" and if you are counting separate incidents or total people killed.

The instant you feel the safest is the instant you're least safe.

Terrorism is the application or threat of force against civilians by a non-governmental body for the purpose of furthering a political goal by instilling fear in the target populace.

Counting by total people killed rather than incidents decreases the vastness of the majority, but I suspect that homegrown still has an edge.

Foreign terrorism certainly wins on average kills per incident, though.

The only strategy worth considering is to invest until Iraq is stable. For that we need diplomacy and a willingness to appologise.

I think a successful exit strategy needs to get 3 things right

1) Federalism: the Kurds, the Sunni and the Shia all want to go different directions. The Kurds want to protect their self rule, the Sunni want to protect their previous privillaged position and the Shia want majority voting because they are the majority. Iraq can't be allowed to break up due to the dissabling effect that would have on Turkey, Syria, Saudi and Iran. A difficult balancing act has to be made, each of the three governments has to have some legitimacy, as does the fedral level, the US cannot now deliver that legitimacy, the UN and the Arab league could. US has to allow direct elections in each area without predujcing the result.

2) Exit date: US should announce when it is leaving and that it doesn't intend to keep bases in Iraq, the exception to this would be the Kurds, but if bases are kept in Iraq to further regional goals of the US as is now imagined by Bushco this will enrage many in Iraq. The Iraqi government that comes into being in June has to have the power to ask US withdrawl should it want. US troops should stop policing duties as soon as possible, they all ill suited to it.

3) Money: The US and international donors should continue to invest in Iraq, Iraqi debt should also be written off in a phased manner, the money should go directly to Iraqi control, American contractors are vastly over paided and the money is thus inefficiently spent, less money could be spent in this way. American companies cannot end up owninf too much of Iraqi wealth of else the locals will smell a fish.

I think the US should reduce expectations of what they are going to get out of Iraq, oil flowing rather then oil in American control, peaceful rather then peaceful and friendly, US troops out rather then US troops stationed in convient bases.

Bush is not going to get any of the above right and I hate to think what stage the mess will be in by November when kerry gets to try to fix it. But if the above isn't attempted I think the alternative is Vietnam 2 followed by Lebanon 2

I believe we tempered it with cups of tea........

Seriously I rather think the Iraqis are getting used to the British being rude, they've had quite a lot of experience with us in the past.

More likely you'd be pushing the truck with Syc steering and yelling "Faster Honey, there's a hill ahead".:haha:

Bush To Hand Over Blame on June 30; Donald Rumsfeld says he is 'delighted'.
May 11 - In a nationally televised address, President George W. Bush revealed that the blame for the Iraqi prison abuse scandal would be transferred from the United States to the new Iraqi government on June 30.
"Accepting blame for the prison abuse scandal is an important step in Iraq's
evolution towards democracy," Bush said, adding that accountability for the
scandal must go to the highest levels of Iraq's yet-to-be-appointed government.
"It is my hope that Iraq's new leaders will accept full responsibility for these abuses," Bush told his television audience. "There's an old saying: in a democracy, the dinar stops here."
While diplomatic experts had questioned what exactly the sovereignty handed
over to Iraq on June 30 would consist of, the president made it clear that it would be made up solely of blame for the prison abuse scandal. "As of June 30, we fully expect to put an Iraqi face on this fiasco," Bush said.
At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that he was
"delighted" by news of the decision to blame the prison scandal on the new Iraqi government. "This is a solution that should satisfy even our toughest critics, because now those critics will be transferred to the new Iraqi government," Rumsfeld said.
Prior to the President's announcement, Rumsfeld had been bracing himself for the release of the Abu Ghraib Golden Edition DVD, including never-before-seen footage and special tormenters' narration. "This DVD is full of extremely radioactive stuff," Rumsfeld said. “Come June 30, the new government of Iraq will have a lot to answer for."

I agree with Warch, in that the worst thing we can do is bail out.

Yep...I think it's fair to partly blame you fucking limeys for the problems that existed in Iraq prior to the COW invasion. :)

Hilarious Bruce!
:D

His one advantage would be that he is not George Bush. Bush has so much personal prestige invested in this war and is so hated abroad that noone would want to spend the lives of their citizens to bail the US out if it would benefit him. The whole 'pay to play' announcment for rebuilding contracts was the last bit of hubris to come out of this administration.

Now the US is trying desperately to get Europe, including the 'old Europe' dismissed so casually 17 months ago Old Europe remarks, to buy into Iraq without the US admitting that we made a mistake or are in any kind of trouble. Of course it's really hard to kiss ass if you're trying to save face.

Now that we have broken Iraq, it is in everyone's interest to clean it up. And a sincere request by 'anybody but Bush', coupled with open bidding on reconstruction, will probably get us allies back.